New Hemingway Novel Due In May Story Parallels Writer's Life During His First 2 Marriages

December 18, 1985|By United Press International

NEW YORK — An Ernest Hemingway novel dealing with bisexuality and a young writer's difficulty balancing marriage and career will be published in May, the late author's publisher said Tuesday.

The Garden of Eden has been praised by Hemingway's son Jack as containing ''as good a writing as my father ever did.'' Publisher Charles Scribner Jr. said the book ''will stand on an equal footing with the other novels he has done.''

Hemingway's widow Mary gave the manuscript of The Garden of Eden to Scribner shortly after her husband's death in 1961, but the publisher said neither he nor any other editor was able to shape it into manageable form until last summer.

That was when Tom Jenks, 35, an editor formerly employed at Esquire magazine, was handed a 1,500-page manuscript of the book.

''I began to see there was in fact a complete novel within the manuscript that should be published, not for fans, scholars or critics, but just for readers,'' Jenks said. ''There was just a really terrific book in there.''

In his biography of Hemingway, Carlos Baker wrote that the unedited manuscript was ''filled with astonishing ineptitudes'' and had ''none of the taut nervousness of Ernest's best work.''

Jenks said Hemingway left notes in the manuscript that guided his editing. ''Those people who have scorned Hemingway for machismo and a kind of brutality in his public life will have to reassess him,'' Jenks said, because he displays ''tenderness and vulnerability'' in the book.

The novel, set primarily in southern France, has several parallels with Hemingway's first two marriages, examining the difficulties a young writer, David Bourne, has in maintaining his work as well as his new marriage.

The Garden of Eden also deals with the themes of bisexuality, having Bourne and his wife attracted to the same woman, and androgyny, as the couple pretend to exchange sexual identities.

Peter Griffin, author of the newly published biography Along With Youth: Hemingway, the Early Years, said the sexual behavior of The Garden of Eden also has its basis in Hemingway's life.

''I know from conversations with Mary Hemingway that Ernest was involved in androgyny in more than one of his marriages,'' Griffin said in a telephone interview from Fall River, Mass.

Griffin said he has not read the manuscript but said Jack Hemingway told him it contains ''as good a writing as my father ever did'' and is reminiscent of F. Scott Fitzgerald, who was a friend of Hemingway's.

Griffin said Hemingway worked on the book primarily in Cuba from 1946 to 1961.